One of the things I talked about was learning from others, and building on their ideas. In folk music, that’s “the folk tradition.” But given that you can’t copyright an idea or a concept, there’s no reason that businesses embarking on a social media initiative — or any sort of communications, for that matter — shouldn’t learn from others.

And case studies can be a powerful way of doing just that. Conveniently enough, there are good people who are compiling lists of case studies online. Some of these lists are in wiki form, so you can easily add your own; others are more conventional sites. Either way, use them. Why not save yourself making the same mistakes others made, and find brand new mistakes to make! As Samuel Beckett so famously put it: No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

And one more thing to think about: If you have an example of how your company or a client did something interesting, why not write something up about it and submit it to one of these lists? Sharing is caring.